In a shift within the ranks of Compass’ Texas operations, former senior sales manager Keith Newman is the firm’s new broker of record for the state.
Newman will succeed J. René Walker who has decided to step back from her role as Compass’ broker of record in Texas after five years working out of its Austin office. Walker will stay on with a broker at Compass, as she pivots to focus on her book “Her First Place: The Black Woman’s Guide to Building Generational Wealth as a First-Time Home Buyer,” which was published in 2022, and its corresponding foundation.
Newman operated out of Compass’ Park Cities office in Dallas for nearly three years after leaving Dallas-based brokerage Ebby Halliday in 2018.
The role of broker of record is crucial to real estate operations. It entails overseeing transactions to ensure compliance with state real estate laws, guiding agents under the brokerage, and managing the administrative and legal facets of transactions.
Compass topped The Real Deal’s list of top-selling resi brokerages in Houston and Dallas in 2022. The firm closed nearly $2.6 billion in sales between March 2022 and March 2023 in the Bayou City with an additional $2.4 billion closed in DFW within the same timeframe.
This change in leadership comes at a crucial moment, as the firm has seen a slew of financial setbacks on the national scale, including a quarterly loss and the company’s first negative cash flow in half a year. It underwent aggressive cost-cutting measures last year, slashing about $2 billion in expenses.
It has also witnessed a dramatic slowdown in its agent growth rate, from a 22 percent rate of growth in 2022, to an increase of 1 percent last year. This stagnation is compounded by substantial layoffs and offshoring efforts, reducing Compass’ employee count to 2,500, down from 3,200 at the end of 2022.
Compounding its financial challenges, Compass is also grappling with legal hurdles, facing 10 antitrust lawsuits in the aftermath of the Sitzer/Burnett lawsuit, which found several brokerages—including Compass—liable for engaging in price fixing and non-competitive behaviors.
However, Texas operations continue to hum along. In September, Compass acquired Realty Austin and Realty San Antonio, expanding its Texas headcount by 630 agents and cementing its place in Central Texas.
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